Nearly a year after soldiers joined their protests and toppled a president, some of Madagascar’s Gen Z activists say the military government they helped install has turned the same tools of repression against them.
The movement traces back to 25 September 2025, when demonstrations over chronic water and power shortages began building in Antananarivo. By October, soldiers from the Capsat military unit had joined the protesters, forcing President Andry Rajoelina to flee the country. Lawmakers impeached him, and Capsat commander Colonel Michael Randrianirina was sworn in as president on 17 October, ending unrest that had killed at least 22 people.
Herizo Andriamanantena, a 30-year-old agricultural engineer who became a figurehead of the movement, recalled the moment as “both joy and relief.” What followed, he told AFP, was “little changes here and there” rather than the reforms promised. When his group organised a march in April to protest the slow pace of change, the new authorities responded with their own crackdown: Herizo and five other activists were arrested on charges of endangering state security.
What happened to them afterward is where the story gets more specific than the immediate arrests suggest. Amnesty International’s tracking of the case shows Herizo was eventually released in late April but placed under judicial supervision requiring him to report to authorities every 15 days — not a clean release, but a conditional one. Fellow activist Nomena Ratsihorimanana, who had worked for Madagascar’s National Human Rights Observatory, described his own arrest as violent: an SUV rammed his motorbike, followed by roughly an hour of “blows raining down everywhere,” including guns put in his mouth and threats to kill him. He was held for five days. Herizo spent 13 days in a cell with around 20 other detainees, including people held for serious crimes. “You’re in a small cell with… offenders, murderers,” he said. “And there you are thinking, ‘You fought for your country but you’re treated like a criminal.'”
The pattern extends well beyond the Gen Z movement itself. Sylvain Rabetsaroana, a former senator and presidential candidate, was arrested in a dawn raid in March and held for two weeks without being told why, before being charged with criminal conspiracy, illegal firearm possession, and attempting to assassinate the head of state. He remains in pretrial detention despite what Amnesty describes as serious health concerns. Amnesty has framed the combined pattern — activists, a former presidential candidate, and others linked to the previous government all facing broadly worded charges like “criminal conspiracy” and “destabilization” — as a deliberate narrowing of political space ahead of the elections Randrianirina has promised by the end of next year.
The movement itself has fractured under the pressure. The original “Gen Z Madagascar” Facebook page, which coordinated the 2025 protests with around 200,000 followers, was hacked and deleted shortly before the military switched sides. Political scientist Ketakandriana Rafitoson said even insiders have lost track of who is speaking for whom: “I don’t even know how many sub-movements there are, who the real Gen Z are, the fake ones.” One faction has since backed the colonel now in power; another, including original page administrator Elliot Randriamandrato, is openly skeptical of Friday’s official anniversary commemorations in Antananarivo. “If it’s something that’s being used again, it’s pointless,” he said.
In a country where roughly 70% of the population is under 30, according to UNICEF, the durability of that youth movement’s trust may matter more to Randrianirina’s government than any single election date. For now, activists who spent weeks in the street a year ago are left measuring a revolution by how many of its own participants it has since put in a cell. Afrikeye continues to track political transitions and governance across Africa.
